


this war named jealousy

by enkiduu



Series: The Burr Interlude [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, M/M, Welcome folks to the Burr Interlude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 10:56:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7312210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enkiduu/pseuds/enkiduu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are ten things you need to know (and one thing Aaron wishes he had known).</p>
            </blockquote>





	this war named jealousy

**Author's Note:**

> Retelling has probably been done to death (ha) but I hope you still enjoy!

**number one**

( _this is the introduction)_

_(get ready folks, it's gonna be a long one—)_

Alexander Hamilton.

Two words Burr will never understand, and he's unsure if he wants to. But Hamilton wins him over with a quick mouth and fierce eyes, shimmering under the sunlight. He doesn't care what Burr wants, doesn't care if it's not Hamilton. It's too late now. Because the moment when Burr asks to buy Hamilton a drink is the moment of no return.

"Can I buy you a drink?" Burr asks. He doesn't mean for the offer to sound as friendly as it does. He doesn't think it's even a particularly friendly offer at all. He regrets it immediately. 

Hamilton must take it as such, because he says immediately, "That would be nice," and a smile lights up his face. He beams at Burr like he's never been so pleased. It's a nice smile, tinged with the surprise of men who are surprised whenever something good happens in their life.

By the poor way he dresses and his hunger-pang frame, the hurried way he latches onto Burr so as to prevent him from dismissing him...Burr doesn't think Hamilton has ever  _had_ anything good happen in his life.

Burr sighs inwardly. If he knows anything, it's that Hamilton's following Burr around everywhere seems inevitable.

They're different. Burr has a legacy to uphold, pride and honor to think of, so much to lose, while Hamilton doesn't seem like someone who would ever let go of anything. He wonders if Hamilton will ever  _have_ anything to let go. 

They end up dining together often. It's an accident that Burr doesn't regret as much. 

"I'll pay," Burr says after they finish eating. 

Hamilton frowns indignantly. "I don't seek charity, sir."

"Don't take it so personally," Burr says. "You're not one who strikes pity. I am saying this as a friend with too much money and nothing to spend it on."

Hamilton blinks and smiles brilliantly. 

**number two**

The thing is, Burr never does anything wrong. He signs up as a soldier like any other good patriot. He makes his way up, trains the regiment hard, and even survives an assassination attempt. 

"Shut the door on your way out," Washington tells him coolly, but when he speaks with Hamilton his eyes liven and his lips quirk up slightly. Burr has hit this ceiling, and through this glass wall he watches Hamilton continue to rise. 

Hamilton gets the war he wished for, the one he wants so desperately to fight. He gets an enviable position at the right hand of Washington. The spotlight is always on him. Does he deserve it? Sure. Burr recognizes what Hamilton has done for the revolution, no one can deny his ingenuity. 

Burr grits his teeth past the humiliation. Right then, Burr realizes that he is the shadow to Hamilton's fire. He will not let Hamilton outshine him forever. All flames burn out in the end, after all. 

But Hamilton is so beautiful and striking and it pains Burr to stare at him, because all flames burn out in the end, after all. 

**number three**

Laurens has Hamilton's affection. Burr may have Hamilton's attention, but Laurens has Hamilton's affection. 

Anyone who's been with the two in the same room has seen it happen, has seen Hamilton smile at Laurens and lean close, share jokes. And they are  _so close_. Burr hears stories of the two during the war, of the two men who accomplish so much and never find it enough.

It's always  _Hamilton and Laurens,_  never one without the other. Burr can't imagine how it is to be synonyms, defining each other. How lucky. 

"What are you writing?" Burr asks once when he catches Hamilton smiling down to something he's penning. 

"A letter for Laurens," Hamilton tells Burr. "Asking him to come back. He would fare well in Congress." His gaze flickers up after he speaks, smile faltering slightly into something different. 

"You care for him very much," Burr says.

Hamilton's eyes veer to the side of wariness. "Is that a problem?" he asks, and that sounds like a confession, an admission of guilt. Burr hears it. 

"No," Burr says, and the word tastes like a lie, bittersweet on his tongue. "Not at all." He smiles. 

Something like relief crosses Hamilton's face. "Thank you."

After Laurens dies, neither of them ever mentions him again.

**number four**

Burr is not Eliza.

Burr is not Eliza, but tonight, Hamilton has come to him to ask him how to dance. There is unmistakable desire in his eyes. 

"We shouldn't," Burr says, because he knows Hamilton is not talking about waltzing. He's seen Hamilton charm all the ladies on the dance floor, move as slickly and lithely as a cat. "Tomorrow is your wedding day, Alexander."

"Then let it be, for this may be the last time," Hamilton says, pulling him in to capture his lips in a hungry kiss.

It isn't the last time, but when they press against each other like so with such desperation, such need, it feels like it is. 

Burr is not Eliza, but he kisses Hamilton anyway.

"I'll see you on the other side of the war," they promise.

Burr wants them to both make it out of this war alive. 

 **five**  

After Laurens dies, neither of them ever mentions him again because they don't have to. John Laurens is there in everything Hamilton does. 

Burr didn't think it was possible to be bear spite for a dead man, but apparently it is. Lauren's death has shaped Hamilton irreversibly. Hamilton's smiles are harder to come by and he talks more than ever, as if scared that if he doesn't speak enough no one will remember him. He writes with in such a tireless manner that Burr is afraid he will burn out.

Sometimes, Hamilton stares off into the distance, eyes glazed over and mournful, before their usual fierceness returns. It doesn't happen often, and it only ever does when it is late at night and he's working on a case alone. When he thinks he's alone. And so often does Hamilton think himself alone...

Burr wonders if a man can let a death haunt him for the rest of his days. He wonders a bit morbidly if Hamilton might mourn him like this, too, should Burr die before him. 

 **six**  

Hamilton asks him for help. Burr turns him down. It's nothing personal. 

"No," Burr says, and it isn't the first time he has said no Hamilton, but it feels like it is, because Hamilton recoils. 

"What do you want, Burr?" Hamilton demands, heat in his voice.

"Why do you care what I want, Alexander?" Burr asks, doesn't say _you, I want you,_ because that is an admission of guilt and sorrow and vulnerability. It's a confession that Burr can't stand to give Hamilton, not when he's so intent on taking everything else.

Hamilton must hear it anyway, and his angry frown morphs into something forlorn.

For a moment Burr thinks Hamilton might apologize. But he doesn't. How unfair.

"Aaron," Hamilton says, and his voice is hushed, urgent, pleading in the way he never pleads for anything. His lips are parted and his fists clenched, trembling. "What are you waiting for? Try to understand—"

Burr opens his mouth to interrupt, wants to kiss Hamilton senseless to shut him up, to tell him to stop. He wants to apologize. Doesn't.

Instead, he says, "it's late, Alexander," and watches the candlelight glimmer and burn in Hamilton's eyes. "You should go."

"No," Hamilton says. Standing on the other side of the darkness of the room, he looks rueful and distressed and wanting. "You're going to regret this."

Burr musters the courage to smile slightly, watches Hamilton's expression turn sullen. Hamilton shuts the door behind him definitively.

Outside, a storm is brewing.

Burr pours himself a drink. 

**seven**

Everything has changed, though Burr thinks it shouldn't.

"I've always considered you a friend," Hamilton says, confused, hurt, gaze utterly devastating.

"I don't see how that has to end," Burr says. It's nothing personal. Not everything revolves around Hamilton, and Burr refuses to give up this chance he sees just because Hamilton suddenly decides that only he can take what he wants and nobody else. 

"You changed parties to run against my father-in-law," Hamilton accuses.

"I changed parties to seize the opportunity I saw," Burr says. "I swear, your pride will be the death of us all. Beware, it goeth before the fall."

Hamilton looks devastated for a moment before he laughs hollowly, with a tinge of shock that comes with heartbreak. 

How unfair of Hamilton. 

**number eight**

"I'm Maria Reynolds," the woman says. Her lips are red like sin. She's beautiful, Burr can see why Hamilton couldn't resist. 

Burr smiles as warmly as he can in spite of who this is and what Hamilton has done, despite the rage that curls in the pit of his stomach. It threatens to burst free, and it makes him sick. He wants to slam the door in her face, tell her that it's her fault, it's  _her damn fault_ for Hamilton's fall. 

"Of course," he says instead. "Of course." 

Because Maria isn't why Hamilton fell from grace, and Burr is not impulsive like Hamilton, who was doomed from the start. Burr doesn't understand how a man can ruin himself in a spur of moment decision for—what, lust?  _Love_? 

There is no love here. Only a man who's ruined himself. 

Burr collects the divorce papers. 

 **number nine**  

Hamilton endorses Jefferson over Burr.

Of all people, Burr thinks, furious. Hamilton has stolen so much from him, taken away what should be his. Why is it that Burr never gets what he wants, when Hamilton gets everything he deserves?

"It's nothing personal," Hamilton says. 

For a moment, Burr thinks Hamilton might want to apologize. Doesn't. It's utterly unfair of Hamilton. He should apologize. Burr would take that, that would be enough. 

"No," Burr says. "You're going to regret this."

But it's not enough for Hamilton, it appears. Nothing is ever enough. 

"So be it. You're on."

If nothing else, they agree to disagree. 

**click-boom**

It takes all of Burr to shoot Hamilton, but both of them fall. 

Hamilton always takes everything. How utterly cruel and characteristic of him. 

Burr supposes Hamilton still wins anyway, even in death.

( _That's it. That's the finale, that's—_ )

**wait**

But of course, the show goes on even after the curtain falls; even if there is no audience, no applause.

When Alexander falls, so should the world. But Life is merciless and non-stop—the Earth still spins and the Sun still rises and he still breathes the same as before (Alexander doesn't). 

Nothing has changed, though Burr thinks it should.

Hamilton is dead. Burr is jealous. 

Hamilton is buried in marble; Burr is buried under Hamilton's legacy. He hates that this is how this how they will define each other. No one has control over their story. They will be cast as villain and hero, and that's how it might be forever, if the tides of time don't wash them away from history completely, if nobody clears his name.

Enemies. This is how people might remember them in the story they will write some day.

Eventually, Burr starts introducing himself with an epithet so he won't have to hear it from everybody else— _my name is Aaron Burr and I killed my friend Alexander Hamilton._

My friend.

"I don't want to fight," Hamilton wrote to a fool who didn't believe him, didn't take that as the apology, the confession, the plead, the _everything_ that it was.

**wait**

_I don't want to fight you,_ Alexander didn't say, but Aaron hears it now, hears it a lifetime too late. It rings in his ear like a mocking melody, out of tune and broken. Like a swan's song on a cold winter day, unforgettable. Like a gunshot whistling in the air, unforgivable.

Aaron should've known, because Alexander always wants to fight. Always did fight, even when it'd lead to his downfall, which it had.

But Alexander never wanted to fight Aaron in this war of theirs because he'd known that they were supposed to be on the same side. They had been, once, Aaron thinks. They got lost and lost each other in the war...

Alexander is dead and Aaron is jealous, has never hurt so much before. He aches for another outcome. When he closes his eyes, he dreams of paths not taken, of a brand new start. Every day is another waking nightmare, quiet, too quiet, and Aaron has never detested the quiet before. 

Aaron's by himself. And if he thought he deserved it, deserved anything akin to pity or forgiveness, he'd want to be the one to tell the story of tonight, tell  _their_ story. If Aaron could just have the spotlight for once, have the audience's eyes on him too—he'd want to be able to tell their story, and not history, because history is a lie a lie a lie told by the victors. 

He wants to be the one to introduce Alexander Hamilton. After all, who knows a man better than his killer? Burr is there when Hamilton is still a stranger desperate to be noticed in a foreign land, and he's there when Hamilton has risen to the top, fearless and fierce and fucking over everyone, including himself.

Alexander is buried in marvel and Aaron is buried in the interludes, the story not told, the subtext hidden between the lines. And he's the only secret left that Alexander didn't proudly publish to the world because, well, a dead man tells no tales. 

He wants the world to know that they were not always enemies, because they are so much more than that. So much more.

And oh, how dearly he wants to be the one to say goodbye. He'd never gotten to say goodbye. 

Aaron Burr never gets what he wants. 

**wait**

Eventually, after the introduction, somebody asks, _Hamilton, who?_

**wait**

Alexander has moved on, the audience moved on. Yet Aaron's still left standing, waiting.

He can't bear to see Eliza or Angelica, can't bear to visit Hamilton's grave. He'd like to openly mourn, because then maybe every morning wouldn't begin with a memory of Alexander, then maybe he could move on. Hasn't Alexander taken enough already? Hasn't Aaron paid enough? 

How can Alexander have let go so easily? How can Aaron have  _shot_ him, taken everything without realizing how much Alexander had to give of himself, always had?

Aaron had been so used to hating Alexander, having waited too long—so long that he forgot what he was waiting for. 

_Who?_

He weeps for what he could've had.

What he can never have again. 

( _this is the final interlude_ )

No—no, Aaron knows now. It's none of that and all of it at once. It's a secret whispered between them that Aaron will never tell, because, well, dead men tell no tales.

( _it's gonna a long one_ )

There are no victors here.

( _forever_ )

_Alexander Hamilton._

Aaron Burr finally understands, but it's too late now.

_**wait** _

( _it's gonna be forever, my dear Alexander—_ )

**Author's Note:**

> comments+kudos are lovely. Thanks so much for reading. I'm so sorry.


End file.
